When times are tough, sales are often down and the economic outlook is not good no matter whom you talk to. During hard times, it’s important to remember that you need your ERP system even more than ever. Although it may seem counter-intuitive to choose your tough time as the ‘right’ time to implement a new ERP system, that is not the case. More and more companies are doing just that – upgrading their systems to provide a better platform for surviving hard times and prospering as things improve.

Of course there are complications you might face along the way. A problem you may encounter is how to extract that cost of your information out of your ERP so you can focus on reducing costs during down time in business. Essentially, you want to reduce your costs by becoming more efficient.

The key to implementing a system that leverages new technology is to reduce cost, scale processing, and enhance your business as a whole. SAP Business One provides a strong business platform for today and tomorrow. The following are some ways you can leverage a move to a new system that can transform your tough time into a profitable one:

Reduce the Cost of Ownership – You want to replace your older, disparate systems that are often a complicated mix of applications, spreadsheets and manual processes that have developed over time. They most likely don’t integrate, are very difficult to maintain, and carry higher costs for outside support. You also probably are exposed to risk when staff turns over. SAP provides a low maintenance system based on industry standard technology that has well documented standard processes that can eliminate all of your previous troubles.

Increase Productivity and Scale for Growth – In order to not add additional overhead, you want to leverage your technology to maximize the amount of work and transactions processed. Your system should be able to import/export system data seamlessly to speed, enhance daily processes, as well as enabling interaction with external business partners.

Improve Business Processes – You want to streamline processes that are too complex and carry too much overhead to execute effectively. A well implemented SAP solution provides the best practice workflows that can automate labor intensive processes, complete with approvals and alerts to prevent unprofitable or unauthorized transactions from slipping through the cracks.

Respond Quickly and Enhance Customer Relationships – Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the key to maintaining lasting relationships with your customers. Increase responsiveness with the ability to quickly respond electronically via email, fax, or SMS. Look for ways to increase your customer service with quick access to account information and speedy electronic responses that demonstrate your business is modern, attentive, and service oriented. By using Marketing and Campaign Management tools to make it easier for you to increase the frequency and quality of contact with your leads and customers without increasing costs. Technology is KEY.

Adapt and Adjust – Change is constant. Your system must be able to adapt and adjust to new business processes. SAP Business One is designed from the ground up to be adaptable and also provides the tools to tailor and customize to your specific needs.

Focus on Benefits and ROI – Always pay attention to the numbers! Make sure you implement functionality that enables you to make good decisions and delivers a solid return for the investment. You can make simple adjustments like emailing invoices and customer statements instead of using traditional mail delivery. This will produce savings and benefits that continue to pay for themselves long after implementation.

In addition to SAP Business One, Third Wave Business Systems offers a number of solutions that can help support the objectives discussed above. Our suite of products includes Advanced Productivity and Document Delivery, Credit Card Processing, Shipping Integration and Project Billing systems that can enhance your SAP Business One platform.

-Carl Fancy, Consultant

 

Prosperous times in business are what companies always strive for. The best ERP software for when times are prosperous will first and foremost provide a clear view of the entire business. It also helps streamline processes to be more efficient and is considerably easier to work with. In terms of support, your ERP during prosperous times should support growth without having to add staff. Your software should also provide a detailed series of data that will monitor revenues, expenses, and customer profitability. It is important to monitor this information because these are the key aspects that will determine actual profitability. Lastly, your ERP software should provide the necessary tools to customize processing without requiring custom programming.

The one thing to always keep in the back of your mind is that prosperous times can often hide business problems. As you become more and more successful, revenues obviously increase. The issue is that as revenues go up, so does spending and quantity of staff. The upside to this, though, is that SAP Business One exists to eliminate those very problems.

SAP Business One has built in tools that allow your system to be configured, which ultimately will streamline your processes and capture very specific information on how your business is running. SAP tools can be used to:

• Create alerts that will monitor important business events and notify the appropriate users of this information
• Develop reports and queries to analyze your business data more specifically
• Add user defined fields to your documents to capture important information about transactions
• Add processing steps to documents, such as sales quotes, that will automatically populate the values in various fields using user defined fields

To enhance the power of SAP Business One, SAP has an ecosystem of add-on products that expand the functions performed within SAP and can be seamlessly integrated with Business One. One great add-on function is the ability for your customers to pay via credit card that can easily be authorized and settled within SAP. In terms of shipping, information can be passed directly to shipping systems such as UPS WorldShip and FedEx Ship Manager. The tracking numbers and shipping costs can then be made available within SAP. Having an integrated payment and shipping plan will immediately save you time and money. You will also have the ability to integrate your website customer and item data with SAP, rather than worrying about having to maintain it as a separate entity. Your data can be easily analyzed with business intelligence tools like Business Objects. With this, you will be able to mine out only relevant data. In addition, you will be able to easily automate business processes with add-ons, such as Task Centre.

If you are looking to explore any of these above options, give us a call today. We are more than glad to help you implement a strong ERP system during your prosperous business time.

-Bob Chellis, Consultant

Having a properly implemented ERP system to support your business is no doubt essential to running it correctly. A properly implemented ERP system can provide your organization with the ability to analyze costs and revenues on a timely basis. Since business is always changing, your ERP System must also involve the flexibility to respond to changing business requirements.

The ability to provide up-to-date and accurate reports for more informed management decision making is another important role that your ERP should have. Lastly, a properly implemented ERP system should always provide better internal controls and processes.

As your business grows, there can be difficulty in getting timely and accurate financial data. This is a major hurdle that many businesses face, especially in their accounting department. SAP Business One is a great example of a tool for crossing these hurdles and providing the required growth.

In order to appropriately manage your financials, SAP Business One is a company-wide ERP solution that works as an integrated system, covering all functional areas including Sales, AR, Purchasing, Banking, Inventory, Manufacturing, Financial Accounting, and Asset Management. When properly implemented, the system becomes a hub for efficient processes. It ensures that the internal controls, CRM, and checks and balances are consistently maintained, all while making sure that the provisions of Income tax or other fiscal laws are not ignored. It also ensures that the Accounting Standards are consistently followed across the company. Overall, it improves the quality of the reporting.

To be more specific, a modern ERP system like SAP Business One allows the introduction of latest technologies like Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and E-Commerce to improve your organization’s ability to interact with your trading partners. ERP systems also provide business intelligence tools like Crystal Reporting, Data Mining, and Early Warning Systems for enabling people to make better decisions and for providing internal controls.

ERP systems also support recent accounting trends to reduce paper documents and duplicate entry by providing online formats for quickly entering and retrieving information. This solution also improves timeliness of information by permitting daily posting and real-time updates throughout the system. Finally, it allows for greater accuracy of information with detailed content and better presentation for Auditors.

There are constantly new developments in ERP software. It is important to choose an ERP software vendor that has the financial ability to invest in their solutions. This will enable your company to keep up with current trends, to apply new functionality, and technology. You will continue to reap the full benefit from your ERP system. Call us or use the contact us link to schedule a review time with us – to keep your systems up to date, profitable, and running smoothly.

-Colleen Connell, Consultant

A Vital Component of ERP Software is a Good Sales and Marketing Module – an integrated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is ideal. A comprehensive sales and marketing module helps ensure that your company stays competitive by allowing it to efficiently coordinate sales and marketing activities while acting immediately to improve sales, service and marketing efficiency.

Sales and marketing ERP software permits the full range of revenue generating activities to be tracked. This begins with pre-sales activities such as supporting lead generation and tracking lead sources through contracting with clients. It may also include tracking client orders from initial placement to the dispatch of materials. All this information is available for simple retrieval and analysis. This provides your management, marketing, sales, and customer service team with information as it happens, empowering them with tools to improve client satisfaction.

A Sturdy CRM Module within ERP provides management with the tools to monitor the performance of personnel. It associates personnel with your organization’s partners, allowing you to track and monitor your contacts, sales, product trends, and point out future opportunities.

The latest ERP/CRM software can be integrated with your e-commerce website, providing a streamlined process from client inquiry through the delivery and billing process.

Another challenge you may be facing today is linking CRM and social media. Social media holds unprecedented potential for you to get closer to clients and, in doing so, facilitates increased revenue, cost reduction and efficiencies. Your company should be looking for ways to get more out of social media. Making the connection between people, systems, and social media interactions will require you to build a new level of understanding of your clients and increase trust based on the promise of great service and value.

Effective ERP/CRM solutions need to link the integrated efforts of discovering leads, generating sales and providing outstanding customer service to assist in the growth of your company in an increasing competitive environment.

At Third Wave, we’ve helped clients do this for the last 20 years. Contact us to see how our experience can help you.

-Mark Berman, Consultant

Startup businesses – those only a few years old or with a new hot product or service – have specific needs and considerations that should be taken into account when choosing an ERP startup system.

1. Have a solid core foundation

ERP solutions for startups should have a solid technical core, based on new technology that can be extended in functionality that runs on widely-used system platforms.

Since your business is in growth mode, you want to make sure that you can start basic and extend functionality over time. This way the process of implementing an ERP solution will be as simple as possible. By going with software that runs on widely-used platforms, this will enable usability throughout your company.

2. Increase productivity

Reasons for initiating a new ERP system in your startup business can be directly correlated with productivity. If your staff is limited and stretched across several job responsibilities, you may want to address immediate operational and organizational supportive roles, all while laying the foundation for future growth and reporting.

3. Easy deployment

It is important to realize that when purchasing a software solution, you want to acquire an ERP startup system that can easily be deployed with out-of-the-box functionality. In conjunction with that, you will want an implementation partner that will coordinate a plan for future phases to encompass the complete company vision.

Learn More: SAP Business One Deployment Options

ERP Startup Package and Partner Characteristics

You are probably wondering what characteristics of a good ERP startup package and implementation partner are. Here are our thoughts:

• You want to make sure the ERP package provides a uniform Windows experience that is intuitive, therefore reducing training costs and time to deploy.
• Your implementation partner should offer a direct path to initial setup and configuration.
• The implementation partner should also be able to guide your company through setup features that will facilitate future growth.
• The new technology you will be using needs to have functionality for immediate reporting and delivery options
• As long as the implementation partner works directly with your company to manage scope and timelines, you should be able to gain immediate benefits while preserving your ability to expand the functionality you are using over time.

Bottom Line

If you are a startup or a high-growth company looking to implement ERP Software, don’t just go for the cheapest option. Do your research and make sure that the solution you’re looking at will cover all of the characteristics listed above.

Third Wave Business Systems specializes in implementing ERP solutions, especially for startup companies. Our experts provide business management software for small to mid-sized companies, enabling them to optimize their overall performance.

As your organization matures from a startup to a more prominent organization, you must assure your ERP System is reflective of this process. An ERP System gives your organization control and info over all aspects of its processes. It’s crucial to realize that countless mature organizations have needs that their current ERP system cannot manage, or the organization may not have an ERP in place at all.

Although it should seem like upgrading your small business’ ERP is a simple process, there are some complications related to doing this to a mature business. Mature businesses have managed to survive both good times and bad times, all while creating to make their systems work for them through those ups and downs. As a result, we often see inefficient procedures in effect that are labor intensive and often require manual consolidation of processes across numerous internal systems and information sources.       

While an effective, integrated ERP system seems like a no brainer, mature businesses face a steeper challenge in integrating an ERP system over younger opponents.  Most mature businesses achieve and maintain their success through exclusive organizational procedures allowing them to deliver superior service to their clients and have been developed over time. In selecting an ERP system, it’s critical for a mature organization to determine the new system’s capabilities to carry out those established organizational procedures in an efficient manner.

ERP systems must be selected based on their ability to process critical transactions you’re depended on for your organization to succeed. From Sales and Fulfillment to Purchasing and Acquisition to total Inventory Management and Financial Reporting, a system must be evaluated based on its functional capabilities. In addition, mature businesses must pay special attention to the inherent capability of the ERP system to be customized to meet their process-specific necessities. Aspects like the ability to process similar transactions using multiple methods, or the capability to add custom procedures to the system’s standard transaction flow should be a big consideration.

You also need to be aware of how the system achieves these customization goals. Are there built-in tools that allow your business to build or maintain the customizations? Is there available add-on products that can deliver additional capability, methodology, and controls that must be adhered to when built in tools or add-ons are not enough? Will the implemented customization or add-on be supported throughout the systems lifecycle of upgrades? While these are important questions for all businesses to encounter, mature businesses should place a special emphasis on these considerations.

So, as you consider your next steps, be sure to consider getting the advice and counsel of a system integrator or software consultant possessing experience, and maturity, to help your established and prosperous business upgrade your ERP software and procedures in a thoughtful and collaborative manner.

-Steve Ovadia, Consultant

RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, is a method of using radio waves to transfer data from an electronic tag. The tag is generally attached to an object to identify/track that object through the order to cash process. Tiny microchips exist within the tag and transmit information to a scanner which distinguishes that specific item from all others. A good example of this would be an EZPass. The EZPass uses RFID to transfer the electronically stored identification information about the vehicle to the receiver. As glamorous as RFID sounds, there are pros and cons that go along with it.

RFID is a more efficient way to identify and track products as they move through the supply chain. Because all the product information is stored electronically, your business process becomes a lot simpler. You will start to see reduced labor costs, increased performance, decreased costs of equipment and tags, and product tracking that is way more accurate. Processes that were once manual, like shipping/receiving and ordering, become automated. You will always have a good grasp on your asset management and knowledge of current inventory because each product will always be accounted for. Gone are the days of assuming where in the supply chain your materials are. Now pallets are tagged by the case to easily identify them. You can replace assumption with knowledge. You will know where a product is, how much is available, and how much it is sold for, with minimal human contact. The most important factor of RFID is the fact that it can reduce stockouts. Because of the above suggestions, RFID can keep such good track of your items that your stock measurements will be near 100% accurate. A good example of this is Wal-Mart. When Wal-Mart started using an RFID process, they reduced their stockouts by 30%. Just remember, you will need to experiment with RFID to see how it will work for your business specifically.

Although RFID can seem like the answer to all your problems, it may not be the best solution for your business. First off, it is very expensive. Some people even view it as an invasion of privacy, wondering how much information is too much information. What legal action is taken against the loss of privacy through RFID technology? Unless there is a visible label claiming that the item is RFID tagged, especially with consumer goods like clothing, people are going to be cautious that RFID is impinging on their freedom. On top of this, scanning is somewhat difficult and tags and scanners need to have the same compatibility. If you want your products tagged, they need to be tagged at the source, have a visible tag on them, and need to be scanned properly each time.

Future Questions you will be asking:

• How often do you sample
• How much of your stock should you verify?
• How much data will you need from start to end?
• What is the level of granularity?
• Does the ROI outweigh the effort put into RFID?

What is SAP Business One?

Our world is constantly changing, to keep track of that change SAP Business One provides you with an ERP solution that gives you a real-time view of your evolving organization. SAP Business One is an industry leader in the world of enterprise business management software, also known as ERP software.

Manage your critical business functions across sales, distribution, financials, manufacturing, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It is affordable and comparatively easy to use and implement. It is designed specifically for small to medium business in the fields of Distribution, Manufacturing, and Professional Services. SAP helps you manage and coordinate your organizational functions and keep clients informed, so you can work on growing your business.

Related: Business Management Solutions for Distributors & Wholesalers

Who Uses SAP Business One Software?

Small to mid-sized companies who are looking to optimize their performance are using Business One. Third Wave Business Systems has expert consultants in these areas. Since SAP Business One provides constantly updated views of your business, you can keep your customers involved and be on top of making sure your business is growing.

How do businesses use SAP Business One?

Video: SAP Business One – Taking Your Business to the Next Level

• Complete view of your organization with a single source for current business data. Get the right information at the right time.
• You are able to maintain a complete customer view across sales, distribution, and financials.
• SAP Automation Tools automate alerts, workflows, and response to crucial business events and customer needs.
• Seamlessly integrate important business processes.
• Eliminate redundant data entry and errors.
• Easy-to-use customization tool that enables you to tailor your specific needs.
• Gives you a feeling of trust knowing you have partners that provide endless client service and support.

Contact us for more information about implementing SAP Business One for your business.